Will you come and see my play Thursday night. I want it to be
liked by an artist like you.
Yours ever,
O. W.
Wilde came to see me, I think, the morning after the production of
the play, or at all events within a morning or two after, and hugged
himself with delight when, in reply to his question, “Do tell me what
you admired most in the play,” I said:
“Your impudence! To dare to come before the footlights in response to
enthusiastic calls--smoking a cigarette too--and compliment a British
audience on having the unexpected good taste--for your manner said as
plainly as it could, ‘Really, my dear people, I didn’t think you had
it in you!’--to appreciate a work of art on its merits! You are a
genius, Wilde, in impudence at least if in nothing else.”
“And you are a plagiarist as well as a flatterer,” he replied. “You
stole that last remark from a story you have heard me tell about
Richard Le Gallienne. I’m going to punish you by telling you the
story, for, though you stole part of it, I am sure you have never
heard it. No one ever has heard the story he steals and calls his
own; no one ever has read--the odds are that he will swear he has
never heard of--the book from which he has plagiarised. Our friend
Richard is very beautiful, isn’t he? Wasn’t it you who told me
that Swinburne described him to you as ‘Shelley with a chin’? I
don’t agree. Swinburne might just as well have described himself as
‘Shelley without a chin.’ No, it is the Angel Gabriel in Rossetti’s
National Gallery painting of the Annunciation of which Richard
reminds me. The hair, worn long and fanning out into a wonderful halo
around the head, always reminds me of Rossetti’s angel. However, my
story is that an American woman, in that terribly crude way that
Americans have, asked Richard, ‘Why do you wear your hair so long,
Mr. Le Gallienne?’ Richard is sometimes brilliant as well as always
beautiful, but on this occasion he could think of nothing less banal
and foolish to say than ‘Perhaps, dear lady, for advertisement.’ ‘But
you, Mr. Le Gallienne! You who have such genius!’ Richard blushed and
bowed and smiled until the lady added cruelly--‘for advertisement!’”
Wilde was quite right in saying I had heard the story before. It
had been told me as happening to himself in America in the days when
he wore his own hair very long, and I am of opinion that it was much
more likely to have happened to Wilde, who was both a notoriety
hunter and an advertiser, than to Le Gallienne, who is neither.
_A propos_ of Wilde’s love of advertising, I once heard the fact
commented upon--perhaps rudely and crudely--to Wilde himself. Just
as I was about to enter the Savage Club in company with a Brother
Savage, who was well known as an admirer of Dickens, we encountered
Wilde, and I invited him to join us at lunch.
“In the usual way,” he answered, “I should say that I was charmed,
but out of compliment to our friend here, I will for once condescend
to quote that dreadful and tedious person Dickens and answer, ‘Barkis
is willin’.’ Where are you lunching--Romano’s?”
“No,” I said, “the Savage Club.”
“Oh, the Savage Club,” said Wilde. “I never enter the Savage Club.
It tires me so. It used to be gentlemanly Bohemian, but ever since
the Prince of Wales became a member and sometimes dines there, it is
nothing but savagely snobbish. Besides, the members are all supposed
to be professionally connected with Literature, Science, and Art, and
I abhor professionalism of every sort.”
My Dickens friend, who shares every Savage’s love for the old club
(he told me afterwards, whether correctly or not I do not know, that
Wilde’s aversion was due to the fact that his brother Willie Wilde
had unsuccessfully put up for membership), was annoyed by what Wilde
had said both about the club and about Charles Dickens.
“I can understand your dislike of professionalism--in advertisement,
Mr. Wilde,” he said bluntly. “And, since you have condescended
to stoop to quote Dickens, I may add that, in the matter of
advertisement, Barkis as represented by Wilde is not only willing but
more than Mr. Willing the advertising agent himself. Good morning.”
One other story of Wilde and Le Gallienne occurs to me. Wilde held
Le Gallienne, as I do, in warm liking as a friend and in genuine
admiration as a poet; but, meeting him one day at a theatre, bowed
gravely and coldly and made as if to pass on. Le Gallienne stopped
to say something, and, noticing the aloofness of Wilde’s manner,
inquired:
“What is the matter, Oscar? Have I offended you in anything?”
“Not offended so much as very greatly pained me, Richard,” was the
stern reply.
“I pained you! In what way?”
“You have brought out a new book since I saw you last.”
“Yes, what of it?”
“You have treated me very badly in your book, Richard.”
“I treated you badly in my book!” protested Le Gallienne in
amazement. “You must be confusing my book with somebody else’s. My
last book was _The Religion of a Literary Man_. I’m sure you can’t
have read it, or you wouldn’t say I had treated you badly.”
“That’s the very book; I have read every word of it,” persisted
Wilde, “and your treatment of me in that book is infamous and brutal.
I couldn’t have believed it of you, Richard--such friends as we have
been too!”
“I treated you badly in my _Religion of a Literary Man_?” said Le
Gallienne impatiently. “You must be dreaming, man. Why, I never so
much as mentioned you in it.”
“That’s just it, Richard,” said Wilde, smilingly.
Here is a recollection of another sort. About the time when Wilde’s
star was culminating, he boarded a Rhine steamer on the deck of which
I was sitting. The passengers included a number of Americans, one
of whom instantly recognised Wilde, and seating himself beside the
new-comer, inquired:
“Guess, sir, you are the great Mr. Oscar Wilde about whom every one
is talking?”
Smilingly, but not without an assumption of the bland boredom which
he occasionally adopted toward strangers of whom he was uncertain,
Wilde assented. The other, an elderly man wearing a white cravat, may
or may not at some time have been connected with a church. Possibly
he was then editing some publication, religious or otherwise, and
in his time may have done some interviewing, for he plied Wilde
with many curious and even over-curious questions concerning his
movements, views, and projects. The latter, amused at first, soon
tired. His eyes wandered from his interviewer to scan the faces of
the passengers, and catching sight of me made as if to rise and join
me.
The interviewer, who had not yet done with him, and was something
of a strategist, cut off Wilde’s retreat by a forward movement of
himself and the deck-chair, in which he was sitting, so as to block
the way. It was apparently merely the unconscious hitching of one’s
seat a little nearer to an interesting companion, the better to
carry on the conversation, but it was adroitly followed by a very
flattering remark in the form of a question, and Wilde relapsed
lumpily into his seat to answer. For the next few minutes I could
have imagined myself watching a game of “living chess.” Wilde,
evidently wearying, wished to move his king, as represented by
himself, across the board and into the square adjacent to myself,
but for every “move” he made his adversary pushed forward another
conversational “piece” to call a check. At last, shaking his head in
laughing remonstrance, Wilde rose, and the other, seeing the game was
up, did the same.
“It has been a real pleasure and honour to meet you, sir,” he said.
“Guess when I get home and tell my wife I’ve talked to the great
Oscar Wilde she won’t believe me. If you would just write your
autograph there, I’d take it as a kindness.” He had been searching
his pockets while speaking for a sheet of paper, but finding none
opened his Baedeker where there was a blank sheet and thrust it into
Wilde’s hand.
The latter, with a suggestion in his manner of the condescension
which is so becoming to greatness, scrawled his name--a big terminal
Greek “e” tailing off into space at the end--in the book, and bowing
a polite, in response to the other’s effusive, farewell, made
straight for a deck-chair next to me, and plumping himself heavily
in it began to talk animatedly.
Meanwhile, the interviewer was excitedly going the round of his party
to exhibit his trophy.
“Oscar Wilde’s on board, the great æsthete!” he said. “I’ve had a
long talk with him. See, here’s his own autograph in my Baedeker.
There he is, the big man talking to the one in a grey suit.”
The excitement spread, and soon we had the entire party standing in
a ring, or perhaps I should say a halo, around the object of their
worship, who though still talking animatedly missed nothing of it
all, and by his beaming face seemed to enjoy his lionising. I suspect
him, in fact, of amusing himself by playing up to it, for, seeing
that some of his admirers were not only looking, but while doing
their best to appear not to be doing so were also listening intently,
his talk struck me as meant for them as much as for me. He worked off
a witty saying or two which I had heard before, and just as I had
seen him glance sideways at a big plate-glass Bond Street shop window
to admire his figure or the cut of his coat, so he stole sideway
glances at the faces around as if to see whether admiration of his
wit was mirrored there.
Then he told stories of celebrities, literary or otherwise, of whom
he spoke intimately, called some of them, as in the case of Besant
and Whistler, by their Christian names, and so tensely was his
audience holding its breath to listen, that when at Bingen he rose
and said, “I’m getting off here,” one could almost hear the held
breath “ough” out like a deflating tyre.
No sooner was he gone than the interviewer seated himself in the
deck-chair vacated by Wilde, and inquired politely:
“Are you a lit-er-ary man, sir?”
“Why, yes,” I said, “I suppose so, in a way. That’s how I earn my
living.”
“May I ask your name?”
“Certainly,” I said (meaning thereby “you may ask, but it does not
follow that I shall tell you”). “I am afraid ‘Brown’ is not a very
striking name, but don’t tell me you have never heard it, for there
is nothing so annoys an author as that.”
He was a kindly man, and made haste to reassure me.
“I know it well,” he protested. “Yours is not an uncommon name, I
believe, in England. It is less common in the States. Your Christian
name is--is--is--?”
“John,” I submitted modestly.
His brow cleared. “Exactly,” he nodded. “I know it well.”
Then he seemed uncertain again, and looked thoughtfully but
absently at a castle-crowned hill. I imagine he was running through
and ticking off as the names occurred to him the list of all the
illustrious John Browns. Possibly he thought of the author of _Rab
and His Friends_, and decided that I was too young. Possibly of Queen
Victoria’s favourite gillie, who was generally pictured in kilts,
whereas I wore knickerbockers.
“You have published books?” he asked.